Daugherty: Reds got what they deserved in Pittsburgh

Oct. 2, 2013

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The eulogy is short and pointed and takes less time to read than Marlon Byrd’s solo homer needed to exit PNC Park in the 2nd inning Tuesday:

The Cincinnati Reds got what they deserved.

Thank you for coming. Drive safely. See you next March.

That is the beauty and truth of The Big 162. Or, in Cincinnati’s case, the Big 163. You are the team your record says you are. There is no room for pretenders or flukes. The 2013 Reds were good, not great. Certainly, they weren’t the team everyone expected them to be when the season started.

All the components the Reds believed they could count on in April vanished in October: The bullpen leaked, Brandon Phillips bobbled a double-play ball, Joey Votto struck out twice with runners in scoring position. Johnny Cueto showered early. Big hits took the wrong exit off Interstate 79. Tuesday night was a replay of last weekend’s distress.

There will be a reckoning after this. Too much money was spent and too many expectations were created for the status to stay quo. Lots of clubs would beg to have a manager of Dusty Baker’s quality and achievements. The Reds aren’t lots of clubs.

What’s the point of raising the bar if you don’t leap it?

Three playoff appearances and two division titles in four years makes for a glossy resume. It also creates a residue of dissatisfaction if you don’t add to those achievements. The proverbial Next Level isn’t far away. Are we there yet?

Brandon Phillips has theories about the stumbles in the footlights. He declined to share them, but he might have hinted at them when he said this:

“(The Pirates) played with some swag,’’ Phillips said. (That’d be “swagger’’ for the uninformed.) “When the lights come on, the stars come out. You become a team, you get energy. That’s what they did. It was very obvious. You’ve got to be hungry to get the next level.’’

Phillips didn’t say his mates lacked swagger. He didn’t have to. It was obvious.

Even after the game, player after player expressed pride in winning 90 games. That’s fine, but they’ve done that already. Better than that, actually. What is the satisfaction in treading water?

Questions are on the table. Goodyear will be around next February. Will Baker? Shin-Soo Choo? Bronson Arroyo? All In 2014 will be launched next spring. Will it come in as hopeful a package as it did this year? Or will it fight for space with skepticism?

After Tuesday, there is a sense that the current on-field regime has taken things as far as it can. Baker has another year and more than $3 million on his contract. Would another year offer diminishing returns?

The best a manager can do is set a tone. What was the tone set this year on the riverfront?

“We have to figure out what’s missing,’’ Jay Bruce said. “We won 90 games, (but) we never hit a stride. We’re a good team. But we need to find a way to be better.’’

Those are questions for the hot stove. For now, we deal with the distress. It started early.The Reds trailed 3-0 before they got a ball out of the infield. Ryan Ludwick singled to left with no out in the 4th, when the Reds managed a run off Pirates starter Francisco Liriano on a Jay Bruce opposite field single.

By the second inning, the loud Pirates crowd began a singsong chant, mocking the Reds starting pitcher.

“CUE-TO, CUE-TO’’ sounded to Reds fans a lot like UH-OH after Johnny yielded solo homers to Marlon Byrd (8-for-13 against Cueto at that moment) and Russell Martin. Cueto left the game after 3-plus tortured innings, in which he threw 60 pitches, many of them hit hard and/or far.

After that, the Pirates added on: A sacrifice fly by Pedro Alvarez, an RBI double by Neil Walker in the 4th off Sean Marshall, Martin’s second homer of the game, off Logan Ondrusek.

Sudden-death baseball didn’t work out well for the Reds. Though you might argue there was nothing sudden about it. They’d been perishing since at least last Friday, when Pittsburgh came to Great American and began the weekend sweep. Or, maybe even earlier than that, when the nowhere-men Mets beat them two of three.

The Reds owned mojo sporadically, when they owned it at all. They never went on the run that Dusty Baker assumed. Worse, they never seemed interested enough to do it. That’s an indictment of how the club was run. Still, if someone had told you the season would crest on Sept 8 with a third straight win over the Dodgers, you would not have believed him.

Sometime between two weekends ago and Tuesday night, the Pirates became the better ballclub. Certainly, the more engaged club. They deserved to win Tuesday, every bit as much as the Reds deserved to lose.